ice cream is NOT impulse in supermarkets

ICE-CREAM is an impulse category – TRUE

ICE-CREAM in a supermarket is bought on impulse – FALSE

Think about where is ice cream stored in a supermarket – old flat boxy FREEZER

Now think of where the freezer is placed in a supermarket – WHERE EVER once can afford that kind of space. As much as the retailers may love to they cannot afford prime space for the dispensing unit of this category.

Space inside a supermarket is gold. The space above the height of the freezer is dead space for the retailer.

Also think about impulse purchase of ice-cream, unless you peek into the icy freezer you wont know what’s inside. After you do that you will need to put you hand in to move the tubs to browse through the available options.

How much more difficult can we make buying of what is supposed to be an impulse purchase product?

Now here were the available options to address this challenge:

Move the freezer to a prime spot

Secondary placement of the product – empty tubs on the shelf

Messages around the store to lead customers to the freezer

Cross category messaging with milk, confectionary etc.

Do these seem viable to you? And are they likely to ease the shopping process which is the price challenge?

There comes OmniSpace retail, the agency I ran for close to 5 years with a very passionate team and the best of clients. The best shopper work that came out between 2006 and 2011 had to be from us.

The solution was there, right there and that’s when we often miss it. The challenge was to execute it right. Shopper Marketing strategy was to ‘make it easier for the customer to browse through the tubs’. One rarely holds out a tub, opens the lid to see the ice cream inside. Its the picture on the pack that helps selection. Solution was bring the tub out without the ice cream.
Challenge no 2. was that the beautifully shot ice cream visuals are always on the top lid. One option was to place the tubs at an angle and yet another one was to add whats inside ice cream print on the display boxes.